Residents are invited to comment on Walden’s 2010/2011 budget June 10 before its final vote. The public hearing will take place at the beginning of the 7:30 p.m. meeting, which has been rescheduled from its normal day.
Walden officials said it is still undecided if the final vote will come that evening or at a later meeting.
“We are having the public hearing regardless of whether they finish with the second reading or not,” said Town Recorder Fern Lockhart.
On first reading the measure was read in caption only to allow for possible changes to the then-recommended rounding up of property taxes to the next cent to make processing easier.
“It’s going to be a negligible amount,” Alderman David Epperson said at that time. “We’re talking about a technicality. It hasn’t gone up.”
Lockhart said she doesn’t expect major changes, but the town has the right to round the rate up or down.
“That’s why they did it by caption,” she said. “Some of those things may change. I don’t anticipate major changes.”
The current property tax is 0.433886678 cents. Lockhart said rounding it up to 0.44 cents would make things easier on the county. Vice Mayor Elizabeth Akins pointed out that it’s closer to 0.44 cents anyway.
As proposed and unanimously approved on first reading, the town’s $1,549,300 budget is balanced and basically the same as last year, except for the new line item for capital projects, which covers the McCoy property.
“That line item is completely for the McCoy property,” Lockhart said. “Other than that it’s pretty much the same as last year. It will come from reserves, where we have been putting money aside over the years. That doesn’t say we’ll use it all.”
As it stands, $500,000 has been earmarked toward renovating the McCoy home and grounds.
General government expenditures are currently set at $800,000; $325,500 is budgeted for state street aid and public works, which will encompass most of the paving; and $205,000 for the solid waste fund, which is now required by the state to be its own line item.
The town will transfer $808,300 into its anticipated revenue from its fund balance, $741,500 of which was capital outlay for the McCoy property. The remainder was paving money that didn’t used over the past fiscal year.
“Normally we skip one year of paving and do a big job next year so we can use two years of money,” Lockhart explained.
Walden will hold a public hearing for its fiscal budget June 10 at 7:30 p.m.